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Insurgent fighters close in on Somali parliament seat

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-02 08:45

MOGADISHU -- Somali Islamist fighters Monday captured a village close to the southern town of Baidoa, the seat of the national parliament, as lawmakers are returning to the town from Nairobi for a crucial session next week.

The fighters took the village, only 22 km east of Baidoa, after confrontations with local clan militias in which one of the militias was killed, Abdirahim Isse Adow, spokesman for the Islamic Courts Union, the insurgent group which took the village, told reporters in Mogadishu, the capital.

Adow said that the militias were mistreating locals and extorting money from vehicles in the roads, adding that his fighters took the village to fight "the criminals who were a problem for the people".

Meanwhile, in Baidoa, nearly sixty parliamentarians returned to the town from Nairobi where they remained since attending a summit of the regional body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), late in October.

The parliament speaker, Sheik Adan Madoobe, urged the remaining lawmakers to return back to Baidoa, 245 km southwest of Mogadishu, "for an important meeting of the house next week".

The 275-member parliament is expected to debate and vote on the recent peace and power-sharing agreements between the Somali transitional government and a main opposition group, the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) in Djibouti, as well as on the controversial new cabinet appointed by Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, despite opposition from President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed.

President Yusuf has expressed dissatisfaction with the Djibouti agreement but Speaker Madoobe told reporters in Baidoa that he personally supports the agreement.